Welcome to Windows 7 Forums. Our forum is dedicated to helping you find support and solutions for any problems regarding your Windows 7 PC be it Dell, HP, Acer, Asus or a custom build. We also provide an extensive Windows 7 tutorial section that covers a wide range of tips and tricks.

Windows 7: the difference between 32 and 64bit

Hi All
I am still a little confused about the difference between 32 and 64bit.
I have a go at installing 64bit and to be honest there was no difference. I have a 64bit compatible laptop with 4GB of RAM.
However, I could only find a handful of 64bit programs such as iTunes etc.. All the rest were 32bit, such as OPen Office, VLC etc..
I did notice that there were two seperate program file folders. One called programs and one called programs x86.
Does this mean that all the 32bit programs will run ok on the 64bit OS or do I need to get 64bit compatible programs....
Very confusing

Hi All
I am still a little confused about the difference between 32 and 64bit.
I have a go at installing 64bit and to be honest there was no difference. I have a 64bit compatible laptop with 4GB of RAM.
However, I could only find a handful of 64bit programs such as iTunes etc.. All the rest were 32bit, such as OPen Office, VLC etc..
I did notice that there were two seperate program file folders. One called programs and one called programs x86.
Does this mean that all the 32bit programs will run ok on the 64bit OS or do I need to get 64bit compatible programs....
Very confusing

You're not really supposed to notice a difference. The whole purpose of having a 64 bit version of windows is because the 32 bit one can't recognize more than 4gb of ram. And you don't need to install 64 bit programs. 32 bit ones work just fine however, if there is a 32 and 64 bit version of a program, you should get the 64 since it's more optimized for the architechure your running on.

Hi All
I am still a little confused about the difference between 32 and 64bit.
I have a go at installing 64bit and to be honest there was no difference. I have a 64bit compatible laptop with 4GB of RAM.
However, I could only find a handful of 64bit programs such as iTunes etc.. All the rest were 32bit, such as OPen Office, VLC etc..
I did notice that there were two seperate program file folders. One called programs and one called programs x86.
Does this mean that all the 32bit programs will run ok on the 64bit OS or do I need to get 64bit compatible programs....
Very confusing

hi\

64 bit with 4 gigs of ram usually will be faster. It depends what you are using the computer for. Most 32 bits will run on 64 bit but slower and less efiecntly. and there are more drivers availible for 32 bit.

Hi All
I am still a little confused about the difference between 32 and 64bit.
I have a go at installing 64bit and to be honest there was no difference. I have a 64bit compatible laptop with 4GB of RAM.
However, I could only find a handful of 64bit programs such as iTunes etc.. All the rest were 32bit, such as OPen Office, VLC etc..
I did notice that there were two seperate program file folders. One called programs and one called programs x86.
Does this mean that all the 32bit programs will run ok on the 64bit OS or do I need to get 64bit compatible programs....
Very confusing

Hello Optimistique, and welcome to Seven Forums.

The articles at the link below can help give you some more detailed information beween the two.

Hi all - I was wondering. I am running 32 bit Win 7 ver 7100 as my OS. I have a fast quad core machine and 4 gig of ram. Can I install the 64 bit versionstraight over the existing 32 bit version? And if so will it need a new key or run using the existing key?

Normally, I would advise anyone with the gear and drivers to go 64. No question. This guy suggests that you can't on that machine (since you have 2 vid cards). I am not sure what he means and he seems to be confused, but...

"ATI CrossFire support is tied to Dell's 32-bit Vista driver software, preventing them from using Windows XP in this mode, or even 64-bit versions of Windows Vista"

I did not read anything else on your system. Check with Dell on this issue.

the difference between 32 and 64bit

BSOD Winxp 64bit, Win7 Pro 64bit many error codesHi every one,
i have this machine which is causing too much headache for me,
this machine was having Windows XP 64 Bit,
and it had a lot of BSOD crashes, then i just decided that it's the time to make the move to Windows 7 for this high performance machine, since i was not able to upgrade to...

BSOD Help and Support

Twinhan DVB card driver works in Vista 64bit but not 7 64bit HELP HELPHello
I have a DVB card called Twinhan 1025
Twinhan company is gone so they dont provide new drivers
the driver we have is for Vista 64bit which works well with RAM more or less than 4 GB but in Windows 7 64bit it works with only RAM less than 4 GB :confused::confused:
My RAM is 6 GB when...

Drivers

MathType add-in not working for 64bit MS Office 2010 64bitHi,
Just got into the flavour of windows 7 for a couple of days and I'm lovin' it.
Now, I installed Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus 64 bit on my system. Then I tried to use the Mathtype plugin 6.6a, but I cannot make it to work.
What I've done so far:
1. Installed MS Office 2010...

Microsoft Office

Adobe Photoshop 64bit freezes on 64bit windowsgetting frustrated as since i got windows 7 both Adobe Photoshop cs4 and Grass Valley Edius keep freezing.
Edius usually only will freeze for 10 seconds then rectify but photoshop is freezing often.. especially after the pc has idled, and nothing can rectify it, so im losing work
help!

BSOD Help and Support

What's the difference: 32bit vs. 64bit?hello... so.. i bought a new computer and I don't know which operating system is good for it ... i don't know , i have an i7-860S processor(2,80GHz) , 6 GB of RAM, Nvidia GTX 295 1792MB ... and I see in other forums and site's some specifications about the difference..
32bit operating system is...

General Discussion

Upgrading from 7232 64bit to 7264 64bit problems.Guys, I'm have some difficulties in upgrading. I keep on getting the following message,
I tried running the setup in compatibility mode, but same thing. I also tried changing the cversion.ini file. Same.
Hope someone can give me some advise. Thanks!!